Ethnic, racial gaps remain in curing diseases

ATLANTA -- Americans made advances in the 1990s against a broad range of diseases and other health threats, but glaring racial and ethnic disparities remain, the government reported Thursday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study looked at 17 key "health indicators" -- statistics on everything from infant mortality to suicide to stroke, broken down into racial and ethnic groups.

For all but one of the indicators, the statistics improved for the overall U.S. population. The death rate dropped 9 percent for stroke, 15 percent car crashes and more than 28 percent for homicides.

Only the percentage of babies born with low birth weight rose during the decade, from 7 percent in 1990 to 7.6 percent in 1998.

Of more concern to health officials are lingering gaps, some of them glaring, for racial and ethnic minorities. Even when those groups saw improvements in the 1990s, whites in some cases managed to improve faster.

Take breast cancer. From 1990 to 1998, the death rate fell 4 percent among black women and 13 percent among Hispanic women. For white women, the death rate dropped 18 percent.